Transport Aircraft for IAF

[Gilles]

I could not find the original 2004 article, but this was copied and posted on another Forum. It concerns the Russian Air Force's upgrade of an IL-76MD and gives an insight on what the price of the upgrade might be, or what it was in 2004.

First Il-76MD-90 to Be Re-engined at Voronezh Aviation Plant in April 2004

The first Russian air force Il-76MD military transport airplane will be re-engined by the Voronezh Aviation Airplane Building Association (VASO) in April 2004, the general director of the S.V. Il’yushin Aviation Complex, Viktor Livanov, reported to Interfax-AVN on Thursday.

“At the present time at VASO, re-engining of two line Russian air force Il-76MD military transport airplanes is underway. The aging D-30KP aircraft engines will be replaced on them with modern PS-90A-76. Work on the first airplane is planned for completion in April of this year. The second aircraft will be ready approximately in July,” said V. Livanov.

He reported that both Il-76MD airplanes reached the Voronezh aircraft plant in 2002. The engineering cycle for the re-engining of one airplane (replacement of the engines and the carrying out of a series of design improvements) takes 1 year. Approximately 1 more years is required for flight tests.

According to V. Livanov, the re-engining of 10 – 14 Il-76MD military transport airplanes is provided for by the program for the development of arms for the period to 2010. After re-engining, the airplane will receive the designation Il-76MD-90.

The cost of the re-engining of one Il-76MD airplane into the Il-76MD-90 variant is on the order of 14 million dollars. The price of the four PS-90A engines (12 million dollars), the installation of the four new pylons (1 million dollars) and other work (1 million dollars) is included in this total.

Owing to the installation of the new engines, the maximum payload of the upgraded airplane will be increased by 10 tonnes, and the flight range will grow by 800 kilometers. Moreover, reliability indicators will increase 1.5 – 2 times, and usage expenses will go down by 1.7 times.

The PS-90A-76 engines have a thrust of 14.5 tonnes. (the D-30KP has 12 tonnes.) He have a 13 – 17 percent lowered fuel consumption. The PS-90A-76 meets the ICAO requirement introduced from 2006 for noise and emissions.

This is the aircraft they upgraded:RA-78854. Although they claimed in 2004 that they were going to upgrade 10 to 14 aircraft with PS-90 engines, my googling has not produced another example other than RA-78854 depicted below.

[archan]

Why saar? do share (with a source please, these word of mouth whisperings as a cover up for lack of data is plainly boring. This must be the new age BRF - earlier, words had to be backed by source) - it was 20 years ago - were they hanging the mig-29s from an IL-76 and flying about with the pilot making vroom vroom noise with his mouth?

You need to grow up child.

Either you ignore the person or stop these personal attacks. If they do it, please report.

[Sanku]

Either you ignore the person or stop these personal attacks. If they do it, please report.

Will do. One response in Forum feedback also please.

[anishns]

Not sure if this is the right thread but, I noticed a C-17 in Qatar Airways livery when I was flying out of Doha yesterday....
Just wondering if C-17's weren't purely military in nature


Added later:
So, apparently they are meant for the Qatari AF, although no one's sure why it sports the Qatar Airways paint scheme

C-17 in airline livery

I wonder if it can carry the Emir's limousines if not the 'Arjun'

[Singha]

probably for Emir's civilian logisitcal hauls it can get anywhere using civilian registration vs a mil registration which needs more permits.

[Pratyush]

Any looks nice with the Tail art and the paint job

[VinodTK]

Aeroplanes: Made in India

New Delhi: With demand steadily increasing for cheap flights between small towns in India, the country is trying to make its own passenger planes. Designed in India and made in Australia, the CNM5 is the first Indian plane jointly developed by CSIR-NAL, a government lab and Mahindra Aerospace, a private company.

It can fly five people or serve as an air ambulance or goods carrier. You could buy one for about two crore. "We can connect our North East. We can connect Jorhat to Silchar. Silchar to Agarthala. We can go across Brahmaputra. We can go to Andaman Nicobar. We can really make a big difference to the country. Specially to transport light goods, 500-600 kg of material. And the maintenance cost of this aircraft will not be too much," said Dr Samir Kumar Brahmachari, Director-General, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR.
:
Another is the SARAS. Originally designed as a fourteen seat civilian passenger plane, it flew first in 2004 and hundreds of times after that. But a crash in 2009 killed all three crew members and almost grounded the project. According to Dr Shyam Chetty, Director, National Aerospace Laboratories, NAL, "The committee which investigated the 2009 crash has ruled out any technical defects or shortcomings. It is just a matter of time before the plane is back in the air." A new SARAS prototype will be ready late next year and the plane is to start commercial production in 2014. But this time, it will serve the military. The Indian Air Force wants fifteen planes, to train their transport pilots.

Our air force pilots have to use big aircraft for training straight away. Whereas this will be the first small transport aircraft training that they can use. So, there is an immediate use for them, said Brahmachari.
:

[Austin]

While we are on IL-476 , page 6 of latest Take Off issue has update on it.

http://en.take-off.ru/pdf_to/to21.pdf

[Lalmohan]

OT - the qatari royals fly in their fleet of high end supercars into london for the summer season every year - i wonder if the C17's fulfil that mission!!

[Pratyush]

^^^

That's all the more reason not to buy the C 17. Since the Indian royals lack the high end sports care to be flown to London. The C 17 is not needed.

[pragnya]

checkout the takeoff by the C-130 in the small video. good info about C-130.

C-130 interactive magazine

[NRao]

Oct 28, 2011 :: DSCA notifies US Congress of possible India C-130J deal

The sale will include six spare Rolls-Royce AE2100-D3 engines, eight BAE Systems AAR-47 missile warning systems, eight BAE ALR-56M advanced radar warning receivers, eight BAE ALE-47 countermeasures dispensing systems, eight FLIR Systems AAQ-22 Star Safire III electro-optical/infrared sensors, eight Rockwell Collins ARC-210 radios and 3,200 flare cartridges

FYI:

C-17 Field Services Base Manager

[Shrinivasan]

^^^ interesting job Ad from Boeing, thanks NRR for sharing.

[saptarishi]

il-476 can be a good platform for follow on order of phalcon aew..even it can be considered for the tanker requirement.it is much cheaper than a330mrtt

[Singha]

imo we should get a330mrtt for tanker role and IL476 (when it restarts) in a modified cruise missile and HE bomber role , getting the Rus to fit two internal bomb bays and rotary launcher in one with necessary adapters which can drop any weapon starting from 250kg iron bombs to brahmos2.
I realize tu160 production is unlikely to restart and this is next best option....

being a transport, its wheels are accomodated in a conformal gondola, so interior is clean and open. addl structural bulkhead in middle will divide the two bomb bays and also perhaps a aux fuel tank.

interior of B52. vertical pairs of rails in bob bays are like racks where bombs are loaded like a stack of wine bottles.
http://www.combatreform.org/B52cutaway.jpg

IL476-BI should be able to deliver say 30t of iron bombs from its two bays or 15t of bombs and 6 nirbhays.....some could be just iron bombers , some (IN) could be brahmos2 & nirbhay only.

[Pratyush]

Singhs Ji,

The modifications expected by you in the 476 will alone cost 10 billion usd. And the payment has to be made in advance.

[Leo.Davidson]

The IL-476 is the way to go, but we cannot expect a delivery until 2020. In the mean time, we'll have to look for options to suffice our immediate requirements.
It will also be better if we could get some kind of manufacturing deal with IL, so that we will be able to produce and service them locally. I believe we'll be picking up atleast 50 IL-476's when we can.

[vic]

I was comparing the configuration of our MRTA with C-390 of Emb. It is clear that MRTA is much larger and much more powerful aircraft. C-390 gives its tactical lift capacity as 60 tons and logistical lift capacity as 80 tons. On the same basis I believe that MRTA is around 100 ton MTOW aircraft and 60-68 tons just refers to its short take off tactical lift capacity.

On the similar note if we compare our proposed NAL-NCA then this aircraft also seems to have growth capacity upto 130-150 passenger commercial aircraft.

NAL-RTA also seemed a good aircraft in the league of ATR-72 but has it been given up or is it alive?

Also again I would say that we need turboprops in category of An-32 which seems to be missing in our list of indigenous developments.

[Vipul]

C-130J creates record by undertaking longest flight in IAF.

The C-130J Super Hercules aircraft of the Indian Air Force has set the record for the longest ever flight undertaken by a military aircraft in the country without refuelling.

"Two C-130J Super Hercules aircraft successfully flew non-stop for 9 hours and 45 minutes from Rome in Italy to Muscat in Oman in June this year setting a record for longest flight without refuelling by any IAF aircraft," IAF officials said here.

IAF's fighter aircraft such as the Su-30MKI are learnt to have registered flights of longer duration but they are refuelled in the air by oil tanker aircraft which help in extending their ranges.

"The sortie was preceded by meticulous pre-flight planning and was undertaken after arriving at the optimum value of fuel consumption to successfully accomplish the mission within the flight safety ambit," they said.

The C-130J was procured from the US under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) route in a USD one billion deal and was inducted into the IAF in February this year.

All the six aircraft have arrived in India and have been deployed at the Hindon air base near here under IAF's 77 Squadron.

India is planning to procure six more such aircraft and will deploy them at the Charbetia airbase in Odisha from where it will look after requirements of the Andaman and Nicobar Island territories and the Northeastern states.

[JTull]

9:45hrs flight for 3000 miles. Should fuel efficiency be the only consideration? Doesn't the no. of hrs an engine is lit play a big part in it's maintenance frequency and costs?

[Leo.Davidson]

^^^^ Rome to Oman ^^^^

http://www.happyzebra.com/distance-calculator/Rome-to-Muscat.php

Distance from Rome to Muscat is: 2918.5 Miles
( 4696.9 Kilometers / 2534.4 Nautical Miles )

Approximate flight duration time from Rome to Muscat is 6 hrs, 4 mins

[krishnan]

As they have just started to fly it , the IAF pilots might have been too cautious

[tsarkar]

Approximate flight duration time from Rome to Muscat is 6 hrs, 4 mins

on a turbofan engined low wing airframe designed for carrying relatively low weight passengers with 30 kg baggage allowance and optimized for cruising.

A turboprop engined high wing airframe designed for heavylifting will take longer.

C-130 cruise speed is 643 km/h compared to Airbus A330 871 km/h

[Singha]

with this kind of unrefueled loiter time could be of use as a JSTARs cum ELINT bird with full onboard processing.
raytheon already has the Astor radar for the cancelled UK pgm.

[Austin]

Not sure where to post but this thread looks most likely

Russia offers co-production of passenger jets

Ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Russia next week, Moscow has, for the first time, offered co-production of five passenger aircraft in India, including the 90-seater Sukhoi 100 Superjet. This is the first attempt at taking cooperation beyond military aviation.

Apart from the Sukhoi, the other aircraft Russia has put up on offer are — TU-204 series with a capacity of 200-plus passengers, AN-148 with seating capacity ranging from 75 to 100, MS-21 with 150-200 passenger capacity and the 70-seater BE-200, which is also used for fire-fighting, patrolling as well as search and rescue missions.

While preliminary discussions have already taken place between both sides in the run up to the visit, India has to take a call based on the assessment of its own efforts to build an indigenous civilian aircraft. The Prime Minister had set up a national task force to study the feasibility of such a project under the chairmanship of former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair. The report, which was submitted six months ago, had said that India has the capability to develop a 90-seater indigenous civilian aircraft over a period of five years at a cost of about Rs 8,300 crore. It had suggested creation of the National Civilian Aircraft Development Authority for this purpose and until then, recommended that the task force function as the coordinating body.

However, the project seems to have got caught in departmental rivalry with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) still not processing the papers for Cabinet consideration. CSIR’s National Aerospace Laboratories, sources said, wants to be the nodal agency for the project while the committee had found the facility inadequate.

Russia, on the other hand, has suggested that its offer should be treated separately, on the lines of existing joint collaboration in the military field like the Brahmos venture, Sukhoi MKI and the ongoing joint efforts like building a fifth generation fighter aircraft. Co-production in India, according to Russian officials, will improve commercial prospects of these planes which are currently used by a handful of airlines in a market dominated by US and European aircraft makers.

As of now, New Delhi has agreed to carry the conversation forward and explore its commercial possibilities. Moscow is keen to elevate this to a higher level during the visit to ensure political consideration for India to enter the aviation market.

While this offer is being weighed against the project for an indigenous aircraft, officials admit that India’s own aviation technology has never really taken off and it needs not just expertise but also creation of high-level ancillary industry for this purpose.

[vic]

The only good project is MS-21 series

as TU-204 series is old, An-148 not a suitable design for passenger aircraft and 70-seater BE-200 is more of Jingo wet dream. 90 seater will directly hit our NCA so we should not kill our own efforts.

[chandanus]

Can the An-32s be modified to carry brahmos or LRCMs ???

[akimalik]

C-130J Demo 'Paris 2011' *In Cockpit*
... hauling the hercules around !
this is the first time i have seen a transport aircraft do a knife-edge. It is a treat to watch

btw, do our c-130s also come equipped with HUDs ?

[Nick_S]

C-130J Demo 'Paris 2011' *In Cockpit*
... hauling the hercules around !
this is the first time i have seen a transport aircraft do a knife-edge. It is a treat to watch

btw, do our c-130s also come equipped with HUDs ?

Yes, they do sir.

Following pic shows the cockpit:

http://defenceforumindia.com/gallery/fi ... iginal.jpg

[Singha]

amazing....we could add a dorsal AL31 engine pod and revolver packs of 72 amraam missiles in the belly to act as a sort of 'missile escort' to strike formations.
radar - just mount a downsized phalcon for 360' launches

[Austin]

Following pic shows the cockpit:

http://defenceforumindia.com/gallery/fi ... iginal.jpg

C-130J cockpit is excellent and forward visibility is also very nice , Now thats what I call a glass cockpit

[Austin]

Modernized Il-476 Transport Assembled

[Ravishankar]

US delivers last Super Hercules cargo plane this weekend

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 220678.cms

[vic]

India needs to start/continue work on :-

Piston 2 seater- Hansa

Turboprop 2 seater- HTT-40

5 to 10 Seater – Mahindra and NAL

20 seater – HAL Dornier and Saras

30 seater – missing – should be extended Saras

50-90 seater – RTA – dropped but should be revived

An-32 category turboprop – none – will be desperately needed after around 5 to 10 years

MRTA is actually 90 ton MTOW aircraft

4 engined turboprop variant to MRTA will always be needed but none planned

NAL – NCA – 90 to 120 seater

120-180 seater – none planned so accept offer of Russia to collaborate on MS-21s

Though the thingie that is missing is the engines:-

We need to develop a line of turboprop engines for a huge number of planned aircraft. We can draw upon the experience of our screw driver brainless assembly of Garrett engines by HAL, if required

[Austin]

MRTA is actually 90 ton MTOW aircraft

Are you sure , MRTA MTOW is rated at 68T by UAC

http://www.uacrussia.ru/ru/models/transport/mts/data/

[Singha]

since we have never tried to make turboprop, turbofan engines for transports or turboshaft for helis on our own, fat chance of that happening.

the only chance I see to close the gaps and regain some control on this mess is either take a strategic stake in the ukraine/rus cos who make such engines (like ivchenko, kuznetsov) or start some JV with them to evolve their designs into the formats we need - have them start an office in blr and depute people , send our people there etc. the western cos will generally be very unwilling to share any engine tech as its their bread n butter / trump card but Rus/Ukr makers being unable to find a worldwide market and beset with funding problems might be more amenable.

what we get may be 90% of the bleeding edge product in the west but we will get something when we need it. being 90% of the best western engine has long been a eastern bloc issue anyway, so its something we live with everyday.

also develop links with promising countries like south korea, brazil,singapore,taiwan and japan who are trying to move up the food chain. bits and pieces of useful kit and knowledge could emerge from such sources...

[Victor]

The best bet for everyone in Asia may be Japan if they shed their no-weapons-export dharma, which appears imminent courtesy of china. A JV with Japan/SK/Singapore could give an engine enterprise the needed economies of scale and the bleeding edge tech. I'm not sure aiming for 90% will a give us 90%. Besides we need the socialist work ethic like we need the plague-they haven't developed anything new in decades simply because there is no more threat of a stretch in the gulag and confiscation of the dacha.

[Austin]

India's low-cost dreamliner

[Gurneesh]

^^^ Could be a prospect for future AEWC

also good Jag assembly footage.

[vic]

MRTA is actually 90 ton MTOW aircraft

Are you sure , MRTA MTOW is rated at 68T by UAC

http://www.uacrussia.ru/ru/models/transport/mts/data/

Compare the size of MRTA and C-390, Airbus 320, Boring 737 and engine power thereof. you will also conclude that it is 90 ton MTOW